Grants and Writing Resources for the University of British Columbia

UBC engineering students took every award at the 11th Annual Simon Cox Student Design Competition in April 2026. Twenty teams of more than 110 students from B.C. post-secondary schools designed technology for people with disabilities. The top prize went to a UBC Okanagan team for a portable drive system that improves a wheelchair's traction and stability on gravel and fits about 90 percent of wheelchair frames. A UBC Vancouver team placed third with an EEG headset that lets people with physical disabilities control a smartphone with brain signals.

Undergraduate Research Positions

Under the Undergraduate Student Research Awards, a professor receives a subsidy to hire a student for 14 to 16 consecutive weeks of full-time work, in summer, fall or winter. NSERC awards are open to Canadian citizens and permanent residents at both campuses. The CIHR and SSHRC awards go only to Canadian Black students, through the Black Student Researchers Pathway, and Indigenous students can apply to NSERC through the Indigenous Student Researchers Pathway.

International undergraduates at UBC Vancouver have the Work Learn International Undergraduate Research Awards, which subsidize professors who hire them for at least 16 consecutive weeks of full-time summer research. Exchange and visiting students are ineligible.

Presenting and Publishing

Undergraduates have run the Multidisciplinary Undergraduate Research Conference (MURC) since 2003. It is open to UBC undergraduates with a current or completed faculty-supervised project, and judges award first, second and third place in both the oral and poster categories. The 2026 conference had 380 presenters and 255 presentations.

UBC Library's open journal system hosts many student-edited titles. The Canadian Journal of Undergraduate Research is student-led and peer-reviewed and takes work from any Canadian post-secondary institution. Sociology undergraduates publish in Sojourners, and the Undergraduate Journal of Experimental Microbiology and Immunology has printed undergraduate articles since 2001. Graduate students run Wreck, a peer-reviewed journal from the Department of Art History, Visual Art and Theory, and Mantle, a student-led review from the Interdisciplinary Studies Graduate Program.

Some departments give essay prizes. The History department's undergraduate funding page lists the Francis V. Lumb Prize of $1,300 for the best essay that includes a critique of modern capitalism, along with the William G. Black Memorial Prize for the best essay on Canadian citizenship. The English department's 2024/2025 list of award winners includes the Marc Beach English Honours Essay Prize and the Lee Johnson English Honours Graduating Essay Prize.

Graduate Fellowships

From September 2026 the Four Year Doctoral Fellowship (4YF) pays a $24,000 stipend plus full tuition for up to four years of doctoral study. Each graduate program sets its deadline. Master's students compete for about 50 awards a year through the Affiliated Fellowships Master's Program, which range from $175 to $16,000 and are made on academic excellence.

Master's and doctoral students can receive a $500 lump sum, once per degree program, from the Graduate Student Travel and Research Dissemination Fund. The Graduate School's Killam page lists the Izaak Walton Killam Memorial Doctoral Scholarships, awards of the Killam Trusts that Dorothy Johnston Killam and Izaak Walton Killam established in 1965. About 25 Killam Doctoral Scholarships go each year to the top doctoral candidates in the Affiliated Fellowships competition, at $40,000 a year for up to two years. Doctoral Affiliated Fellowships range from $175 to $40,000, and most come to about $16,000.

Writing Help and Thesis Editing

The Centre for Writing and Scholarly Communication offers one-on-one writing consultations with a peer consultant, in person or as written feedback. Consultants take academic, creative, professional and technical writing from writers at all proficiency levels. The Centre also holds online writing retreats on Zoom, called Write to Flourish, Write with Flourish, with dedicated writing time and shared goal-setting for undergraduates, graduate students and postdoctoral researchers working on anything from a course paper to a dissertation.

The Graduate School's page on editing your thesis makes the student responsible for grammar, spelling, consistent terminology and clear writing, and expects the supervisory committee to see that appropriate editing is done. A student may hire an editor. Student and supervisor are expected to discuss whether that is appropriate and agree on the editing tasks, and the page points both to the Editors Canada guidelines for ethical editing of student texts.

Format Checks and cIRcle

Before the defence, a student can send a PDF to the Graduate School thesis team for an optional pre-review of formatting, chiefly the preliminary pages. The team expects the draft to have been checked against the Sample Thesis first and asks for at least five business days.

The defended thesis goes to cIRcle, UBC's open access repository, as an unsecured PDF. Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies reviews the formatting there and does no proofreading. Once cIRcle accepts a thesis, it can't be changed, and the approved thesis appears online in three to four days.

After you and your supervisor agree that an editor suits your thesis and settle the tasks, our editors can give it a final edit for grammar, consistency and format. See our University of British Columbia dissertation and thesis editing and University of British Columbia essay editing pages, or write to editors@editorsforstudents.com.

From Our Writing Guides

• The Results Chapter: Presenting Data with Forensic Clarity
• The Discussion Chapter: Mastering the "So What?" Factor
• ESL Academic Writing: Overcoming Common Grammar Habits